Risks and benefits of resistance training, and misinformation in the fitness industry

The Kevin Bass Show

For the past few months, thanks to @derek_barbellmedicine (and thanks to @austin_barbellmedicine for referring me to him), I have seen big improvements in my back pain and stiffness, and I'm able to train my sport and lift with less pain than I thought possible.

I have been struggling with lower back pain for more than a decade, and the idea that simply strengthening and progressively overloading my back using the very movements that cause it to hurt has been a welcome challenge to my belief system.

For that reason, I couldn't recommend the folks at Barbell Medicine enough.

However I still have serious reservations about the kinds of programming and the culture of weight lifting, powerlifting, resistance training, etc. that I believe led to my back problems--starting in my teens--in the first place. I believe that intelligent programming is not communicated and that the fitness industry systematically overstates the benefits and downplays the risks associated with misuse of powerful barbell exercises.

By misuse, I mean an excessive emphasis on intensity, high loads, etc., with little to no supervision and minimal education about intelligent programming. Without that supervision or education, injuries are inevitable.

What the fitness industry does at this point is what I call "outsourcing of risk". It takes credit for all of the benefits of resistance training, sometimes overhyping them out of proportion to what an impartial evaluation of the scientific literature really shows, but then, when risk is discussed, blaming all of that risk on the misapplication of resistance training by the user.

What this common response to discussions about risk misses is that, if marketing and overhype take center-stage, and education about risk-reduction and appropriate programming is given short shrift, then the responsibility for harm is not with the user, but with the fitness industry that overpromises and undereducates--elevating both sales and rates of injury.

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